The diplomat stated, “This is the first time in the history of Japan, a country that suffered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the current defense minister has publicly declared the need to break the taboo surrounding nuclear weapons. We consider this official rhetoric provocative and completely unacceptable.”

Nozdrev noted that the statements by the Japanese official do not represent “an isolated incident, but rather one of the constant steps in the trajectory of the current government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi toward the accelerated remilitarization of the country and the destruction of its postwar pacifist foundations.”

Japan traditionally adheres to the three non-nuclear principles: “not possessing, not producing, and not allowing the introduction of nuclear weapons.”

The United States, for this reason, does not deploy nuclear weapons at its Japanese bases, and its nuclear-capable warships do not call at Japanese ports.

The United States dropped on August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 140,000 of the city’s 350,000 inhabitants.

Three days later, on August 9, it dropped another bomb on Nagasaki, killing nearly 74,000 people, most of whom were civilians.

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